Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
40-59)
PETER HORROCKS,
RICHARD THOMAS
AND BEHROUZ
AFAGH
4 NOVEMBER 2009
Q40 Chairman: Is this blocking
enabled because of the collaboration of Google and certain other
internet service provider sites, which are in effect working in
cahoots with the Chinese Government?
Peter Horrocks: I don't think
it's particularly about that, although I know that there has been
some speculation about it. I think it's simply that the Chinese
authorities are smart at doing this. They know the sites that
they wish to block and block those specific named sites. A wide
range of them are interfered with.
Chairman: I have had personal experience
of being in Shanghai airport and being able to get on the Guardian
site but not the BBC site. That was about four years ago.
Sir Menzies Campbell: What inference
do you draw from that?
Chairman: None at all. It was pretty
random.
Q41 Sir John Stanley: Can you
just give us the current position on what the Russian authorities
are doing to try to constrict you, jam you and disrupt your broadcasting?
Peter Horrocks: The main way in
which we believe that the Russian authorities have made life more
difficult for us relates to rebroadcasting through local FM stations—we
had a number of arrangements in place a few years ago, then our
partners for commercial reasons were not able to host the BBC's
content any more. So, it is not about technological blocking but
more about a political perspective and making it difficult for
our radio content to get to audiences in Russia in the quality
that people now expect their radio to be. We still deliver through
short-wave and medium-wave, but audiences, once they have high-quality
radio such as FM, don't typically tune to AM short-wave frequencies
instead. The website is not blocked at all. It is not like China.
That is why we have put significant extra resource into our online
presence in Russia. We believe that that has been a successful
way of engaging a new audience in Russia. It has also happened
to have a benefit for our radio programming, particularly our
interactive radio programme, when people have come to the website
and then taken part in our radio programmes in greater numbers,
because of a stronger online presence.
Q42 Sir John Stanley: Do you have
any means of overcoming the rebroadcasting problems that you have
run into? I assume those problems were as a result of political
pressure on your various partners to disconnect with the BBC.
Are you trying to replace that FM rebroadcasting? Do you have
any means of doing that?
Peter Horrocks: We do not, I am
afraid. We continue to talk to our partners and, if the political
situation relaxes, then of course we would want to be back on
air as soon as possible but, short of that, certainly in terms
of radio and online, there are no other ways to deliver our content
to audiences in Russia unfortunately.
Q43 Sir John Stanley: Okay. What
is your judgment as to the numbers of people that you are reaching
in Russia at the moment?
Peter Horrocks: I am not sure
that I have those figures with me. I can get some figures to you,
but I don't think that I have them immediately to hand—if
I find them in a second I'll let you know.
Sir John Stanley: If you can't, please
let us have some figures, so that we can get some perspective
on what sort of coverage you are getting.[5]
Chairman: I am very sorry, we are going
to have to break. I urge my colleagues, please do come back, because
we have to get through some more questions. Thank you very much.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
On resuming—
Q44 Chairman: Thank you very much
for waiting. Apologies for the Division—that is out of our
control. Can I take you to Sri Lanka? I understand that your FM
programming was suspended as a result of interference by the Sir
Lankan Government and the pressure that they were putting on the
national broadcaster. I should be interested to know when or whether
you think that the services in Sri Lanka will be resumed.
Peter Horrocks: In our submission
to the Committee, we thought at that stage that they were resuming,
but they have not yet resumed.[6]
We have been in discussions with the relevant regulatory authorities
in Sri Lanka and we hope to have our service back on the air by
the end of the year. I think that that is a realistic time scale,
but we are not yet back on the air.
Q45 Chairman: Is it a political
problem?
Peter Horrocks: I believe it is.
It is not something that is directly from the Government. It is
through the regulatory authority. In the end, coming off air was
a decision that the BBC took as opposed to being taken off the
air directly by the Sri Lankan authorities, but that was because
our signal was being interfered with in relation to specific editorial
content. If there were particular stories that we were covering
or particular people who we were interviewing, the signal would
suddenly be cut or be interfered with. We decided that that was
intolerable and decided to withdraw our service. The nature of
the dialogue with the Sri Lankan authorities is more about giving
us comfort that we can be back on the air without that kind of
editorial interference.
Q46 Chairman: Was that interference
in the English service, the Tamil service or the Sinhala service?
Peter Horrocks: It was both the
Tamil and the Sinhala services. It was slightly more with the
Tamil service, but it was with both. One of the important things
about the BBC's coverage of the Sri Lanka story is that the Tamil
and Sinhala teams work very closely together, right alongside
each other, within Bush House. They each have a commitment to
cover the story from all sides of the conflict, as opposed to
taking as it were the language perspective of their particular
listeners. That led to both those services being interfered with.
Q47 Chairman: It is obviously
a matter of some concern. You say the end of the year. Do you
have an absolute promise that that will happen?
Peter Horrocks: No. It is within
Behrouz's region. I do not think that we have a commitment. Recently,
we have had encouraging signals, but things have not got back
on air yet. We hope that they will do shortly.
Q48 Chairman: Okay. We will no
doubt take this matter further.
You were taken off the air in Rwanda. Was that
the decision of the Rwandan Government or did you take that decision
yourself?
Peter Horrocks: No, it was the
Rwandan Government.
Q49 Chairman: That was because
they said that you broadcast material denying genocide. Is that
correct?
Peter Horrocks: That is what they
said. We did not agree with that interpretation. Clearly, Rwanda
is a country where the scars of the recent past are very deep,
and where the use of language and how it is interpreted is a matter
of real controversy so we listen very hard and take very seriously
the Rwandan Government's concerns. However, we thought that the
extent of their reaction was an over-reaction. We certainly shouldn't
have come off the air. We were also disappointed that at that
period the Rwandan Government decided no longer to provide interviews
with the Great Lakes service, the service that was set up after
the massacres. That made it even harder to do properly balanced
coverage. We're pleased to say that the Rwandan Government are
now offering interviews again to our service and we're trying
to re-establish confidence, and to make sure that we're covering
the story as fairly as we feel we need to, but reflecting the
Rwandan Government's perspective on it as part of that.
Q50 Chairman: How long was the
FM service off air?
Peter Horrocks: I think it was
a couple of months.
Q51 Chairman: But it's been restored?
Peter Horrocks: It has been restored.
We are back on air now, yes.
Q52 Chairman: I understand you've
also had a problem in Azerbaijan.
Peter Horrocks: Yes. We're not
on the air at all in Azerbaijan. Along with other international
broadcasters, we had a variety of ways of getting our content
to audiences, with relay stations and also local partnerships,
and all of those were stopped by action of the Azerbaijani Government.
Q53 Chairman: What reason was
given?
Behrouz Afagh: They said they
introduced legislation, but we believe it was political.
Q54 Chairman: Was this related to
an election? The election was some time past, wasn't it?
Behrouz Afagh: It was. Sometimes
some of this legislation coincided with an event, but it's been
a trend. It started in 2006-07, I believe, and it's continued
and the last chapter was in January 2009, when they removed—
Q55 Chairman: And you're still
off air in Azerbaijan?
Behrouz Afagh: Yes, and that's
the case for all international broadcasters.
Q56 Chairman: Can I move on to
your financial situation. What is your expected financial out-turn
for the current financial year?
Richard Thomas: At the moment
we're forecasting probably a small underspend, mainly because
we're having trouble recruiting all the positions that we have
in the Persian service and the Arabic service.
Q57 Chairman: What about the impact
of the decline in the value of sterling? Has that been a serious
problem for you?
Richard Thomas: Yes, it has. We
spend about £24 million-worth in foreign currencies around
the world. We get in, through some of the other commercial deals,
about £4 million-worth. So we've got a net exposure, if you
like, of about £20 million. I think that in the last financial
year the fall in value of sterling cost us about £4 million,
so we had to cover that, we put extra savings in to offset that,
we had a reserve anyway and we've actually had to increase the
reserve in the current year budget.
Q58 Chairman: Did the Overseas
Price Mechanism apply to the World Service?
Richard Thomas: No. I'm not even
sure what that is.
Q59 Chairman: So this hasn't been
a sudden change. You weren't in the same position as the British
Council or some of our diplomatic posts around the world?
Richard Thomas: No. We're not
in that sort of network. We're much more tied in with the BBC
and the way it manages foreign currency, and we hedge against
it, but we don't speculate. The hedging is very much just fixing
so that we know what our exposure is.
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